In sprawling fields of golden corn, Michael pays a visit to someone whose face is painful to look at. He knows he deserves it, and worse. They don't see it that way.

III—Heavenly Wisdom

Michael is old. He is older than Time, and he is — in many ways — immortal. Lately he has been feeling his age. All his uncountable years are weighing down on him, crushing. His mistakes, too. They're even heavier; harder to bear. Michael carries his sins, knowing there is nothing he can ever do to fully atone for their innumerability; the load will never lighten.

He feels each and ever one as though they are tangible as he spreads his wings, the photons scattering in every and all directions — in another plane, at least. Yes, in another plane of existence, his wings are solar flares, burning orange and yellow and red. They used to burn white, sometimes even blue, with righteous fury. They have not been that bright in… Oh, about a century.

With one, strong beat of his wings, Michael and his burdens are flying.

He knows each and every entrance to Heaven. He watched his Father create it, after all. Michael enters through a quiet corner of the Garden; angels rarely travel there, and Joshua will know his reasons for being there. He trusts his brother (he trusts Joshua more than Raphael sometimes, he thinks) not to inform the others of his presence. They will expect him to return — to lead. Michael… Michael doesn't think he has that in him. Not anymore.

He navigates the Axis Mundi quietly, gliding through on a metaphysical tailwind that carries him through Heaven, only stopping when he comes across what he's been searching for.

Michael lands in a field.

It's a cornfield. The corn plants are golden, soft. The sun is bright; he feels it seeping into his skin, warming his clothes. He lifts his head and closes his eyes, face to the sun, and stretches out his hands. The corn brushes his skin. A soft breeze sends a quiet, almost unnoticeable rustling through the fields. Everything else is silent.

For the first time in a long, long time, Michael allows himself a smile.

"I've been wondering when you were going to show up."

The smile fades, and Michael opens his eyes to stare hard at the horizon. The person comes to stand by his side, but Michael does not look at them. He doesn't think he can bear to see that face.

"A century — I thought maybe you'd just gone and killed yourself," Sam Winchester says quietly, not cruelly, just stating the facts. Heaven can do that to a person; make them bluntly honest because truths don't hurt as much — not to other humans, anyway. To angels, who have spent eternity in Heaven, truths are more painful than lies. (Or so he thought, once and a lifetime ago.)

"I want you to look at me. You deserve it," Sam continues.

Michael doesn't move; he is frozen in place, unable to drag his eyes across to the human whose life he twisted and orchestrated from birth till death.

"Michael."

With a sigh, he turns to Sam Winchester. The face, a copy of— of him, is staring at him with soft hazel eyes full of… not loathing. It makes him sick. He looks away, but Sam moves back into his line of sight once more. Sighing again, Michael glares.

"You're forgetting yourself, Sam," he says warningly.

Sam glares right back, a fire entering his eyes. "No I'm not. You don't have the right anymore, and you know it."

Michael closes his eyes, more exhausted than he has ever been.

Michael is old. He wants to rest.

He looks out at the cornfields sprawling in every direction, nothing in sight but the Axis Mundi in the distance and the vague impression of stars behind the false backdrop of a blue sky. "Where are we?" he asks, voice a murmur. He has seen everywhere the Winchesters have visited, and this place certainly was not one of them.

"Just somewhere I made up when I was a kid," Sam replies softly. "We were always on roads, in towns or in cities. I never really saw anywhere… open, I guess. I wondered what it would be like. It's pretty nice. Quiet. I… It helps, coming here, sometimes."

"Helps with what?" It's strange, he thinks. They're talking almost like friends, despite everything he has done to Sam and his family.

"With the memories. I remember burning. I remember what you did to me, and what Lucifer did to me while I was trapped with him."

Michael can't stop the grimace at the mention of his brother, and he turns his face away.

"He was cold — colder than anything I've ever experienced. He was angry and wrathful and everything I was afraid having the Devil in my head would be like," Sam says, and there is a faint tremor to his voice. "But he loved you. He never wanted to kill you, and before we died I felt everything he did like we were the same person. He loved you."

Michael closes his eyes. He doesn't want to hear it. He doesn't want to know the mistakes he made.

"He loved you, and you killed him."

Michael rounds on Sam, surging towards him and lifting him from the ground by his neck. It won't do anything to harm him — not unless he decided to smite the human, in which case his soul would be erased from existence — but it will shut him up.

"Don't," Michael says, shaking his head. "Don't say it. Don't tell me what I did, Sam, because I know. I feel it every damn second."

Sam just hangs there, unable to speak as Michael is almost crushing his trachea, and frowns. There is no judgement in his eyes. Michael doesn't like it. He roams over the human's face, seeing L— seeing him everywhere. He looks at his own hand, his white knuckled grip on Sam's throat.

"Michael, I don't want this."

"Neither do I, Lucifer, but it has to be done."

"Brother, please—"

"Fight, or I'll kill you where you stand. I have to do this, Lucifer. You're a monster, and you have to die."

"Michael—"

He lunges, and there is light, and screaming…

And nothing.

Michael drops Sam and takes a step back, glaring up at the false sun.

"How much do you hate yourself now, Michael?" Sam asks, his voice raspy as he picks himself up off the ground. And, strangely, he just sounds sad. "I should hate you for everything you did, but for a brief time I was Lucifer, and you were my brother. I just feel pity."

Michael looks at Sam sharply, but the face, and now the red mark from his unrelenting grip— He looks at the horizon once more.

There is a long, tense silence, until Sam sighs. "Why'd you come back, Michael?"

He cracks a smile; it feels jaded. "I want to fix it." He laughs; it sounds broken. "Can you believe it? Thousands of years I've spent planning on killing my brother, and none of it was worth it. Nothing was worth that." So here he is. Staggering under the weight of his mistakes, drowning in his grief, choking on his sins. And for what? His own delusions of a Paradise that was never to be?

Michael is old. He knows he must try to do what his Father has asked of him, but what good did it do him last time? Is… Is he doubting? He closes his eyes, hating what he has become. A failure, and an unfaithful failure at that.

"Then fix it," Sam says, so simply, like he's talking about some broken toy and not the fate of Creation that he sought fit to— to manipulate so carelessly.

"It isn't that easy."

"Really? You screwed the world up easily enough; you can put it back just as easily now you know what you did wrong."

Michael sighs shortly. He should never have come here. He should have visited Dean — at least then he might actually be on the receiving end of some well-earned anger and disgust. Not this calm, quiet understanding from the youngest Winchester brother.

"You said you wan to fix it. Do you mean it?" Sam asks, an edge to his voice now.

Michael looks at him. Really looks. He looks past the visage of his little brother and at the gleaming, pure, human soul beneath. "Of course."

"Really? There's no chance you'd change your mind? Not even slightly?" Sam demands, his voice rising as he draws himself up taller.

Michael frowns. "There is nothing in Creation that would stop me if there was even the slightest chance I could undo my wrongs."

"Then do it." Gone, now, is the amiable, soft voiced human. Sam Winchester, hunter, Boy King of Hell, stands in front of him now, speaking with the authority of a soldier. Michael knows this tone; it is a language he understands better than any. "If there's one thing I know about archangels, it's that they're stubborn assholes. You, Raphael, Lucifer and Gabriel — not a single damn one of you would ever do something you didn't want to. But what you did want, you got. You're—" Sam shakes his head, huffing out a laugh. "You're ancient, Michael. If anyone other than— than God is powerful to change what happened, it's you. You're enough like Dean for me to be sure of that."

Michael stares, shaking his head slowly. "I think I'm Falling, Sam — or close to it, anyway. I won't be that powerful for that long."

Now, now there is disgust. "Castiel Fell. He fought for what was right, and you kicked him out of his own home for it. Cas Fell, and he kept fighting. He died for what he believed in," Sam says heatedly, crossing his arms over his chest.

"You have an alarming amount of faith in me, considering everything I've done to you," Michael remarks, not understanding.

Sam smiles slightly, stance easing. "I've had time to be angry and get over it. No one died—"

Yes. Yes they did.

"— and the world isn't smoking. And you're like Dean. As much as he'd deny it, you're a lot like him. I've dealt with his self-loathing and stubbornness before."

Much like— like he had to deal with Michael's own shortcomings before.

"For what it's worth, Sam," he says, "I really am… I'm sorry." He's never been sorrier.

Sam raises his eyebrows. "Then prove it. Fix it."

"You do realise—"

"I've travelled in time before. It's a… It's intense, and we never changed anything, really, but I think you're more likely to to get results."

Michael frowns, staring hard at Sam. "If I do this, I could essentially unmake everything. At best, you'll end up with two sets of memories."

"I'll live," Sam says, laughing slightly at his own joke.

Michael can't help the small, disbelieving laugh that escapes him. "After everything I've done…"

Sam shakes his head. "You have a lot to make up for. A lot. But I think you finally get what me and Dean and Bobby, Cas and Gabriel, Ellen and Ash and Jo — what we were all fighting for."

He does. Finally. After too long. Far too long. "Free will."

Sam sighs heavily. "I guess if this doesn't work, I won't see you again. But… If it works, and if you're not busy doing… I don't even know what, you can stop by here whenever."

Michael raises his eyebrows, surprised. This easy conversation with Sam, a human whose life he has manipulated and orchestrated before he was even born, is strange enough, but an open invitation to the human's personal Heaven? "Why?" he asks, genuinely needing to know.

Sam shrugs, looking away for the first time and sweeping his gaze over the horizon. "I don't know. I guess… for a short time, you were my brother. I get it if you don't want a human around — you angels aren't exactly the most sociable crowd — but Cas seemed to warm up to me in the end, so…" He sighs. "It doesn't matter. Good luck, Michael."

He looks at Sam. Sam Winchester, boy with the demon blood, and he doesn't see… Michael doesn't see Lucifer. Rather, Michael doesn't see Lucifer as he was when he died, but Lucifer as he was when he was still good. Michael sees Lucifer, but Lucifer doesn't completely hide Sam. Sam, who has never had the same pride as his brother did. Sam, who lies, unlike his brother; but Sam, who does not lie easily with malicious intent.

He smiles, faces Sam, and places a hand on his shoulder. "Thank you."

Michael is old. He decides that, with an eternity behind him and oblivion ahead, he may as well start living as he did once, long ago. He gathers his sins and his grief and his pain in his wings as he spreads them wide.

Michael flies, and the weight is slightly easier.

A/N: Just a little something while I continue with Lessons Learnt. School is insane, and I have mock exams coming up so I've barely had time to do anything. Anyway, just another one shot about Michael. A slightly depressing one, too. There will be cheerful ones, I promise... Merry Christmas?